My
first introduction to Joan Crawford was in 1978. I was 13 and the
book Mommie
Dearest
had just been released with tremendous publicity. Perpetually angry
at my own mother, I asked for MD as a spiteful Christmas
gift. My mom was supposed to get the hint that I somehow equated
what I'd been reading about "mean Joan" with her. Mom
sensibly didn't think anything of said hint, and pleasantly and
unguiltily purchased my request. After that, my junior-high cohorts
and I spent a few weeks feverishly discussing things from the book (which was
being passed around a la Forever
Amber):
"She made her wear the same dress to school every day!"
(And then we moved on to other burning issues, like "Who's
better, Starsky or Hutch?" or, more funnily, "Which one
of the Village People would you want for a boyfriend?") When
MD the Movie came out in 1980, I was a freshman in high school
and still lived way out in the country and had no way to drive 45
minutes into Fort Worth to see movies. Nor did I, at age 15, have
any contact with any sort of gay community; I completely missed
all the fuss and the beginning of the Joan Camp Craze.

Cut
to seven or so years later. I was at college and worked in
a campus library, on the floor with all the movie books. I came
across Alexander Walker's Garbo bio and fell in love with her
face. (Which also corresponded with my newfound realization that I was probably
gay---Parents, BEWARE! Sexy movie stars really will help your kids
come out!) : ) I started reading all I could about Garbo and, not having
a newfangled (for 1987) and expensive VCR of my own, renting her movies and
watching them at the library. I was pretty disappointed with her
acting skills in her talkies and remember thinking, sans a girlfriend
of my own but desperately needing some substitute: "Damn, now
who will I like?"

Renting
Grand
Hotel
answered that
question! I hated Garbo's woodenness in it but was awestruck
by Joan's extremely fresh, modern acting and her beauty. I'd been
on such a Garbo kick that I felt somewhat guilty for moving on,
but...There was Garbo-author Walker's equally good book on Joan,
and Conversations
with Joan Crawford, which
made me fall in love with Joan's honest voice and humor, and the
Thomas bio and Jazz
Baby...
and Rain
and
Autumn
Leaves
and Johnny
Guitar (about
the only Joan movies available in video stores at the time)... Then
a local theater showing of a Mildred
Pierce/Strait-Jacket
double feature (the latter giving me my first introduction to the
camp aspect of Joan). The woman was not only gorgeous, but
also intense and smart and darkly funny and extremely talented and
just plain driven, even in her latter-day films...
The more I read and watched, the more I liked her and was fascinated
by her.

Cut
to Christmas 2000: Since the late '80s, school and life had
interceded
in my Joan fandom---I had continued to read more of her bios and see
as many of her movies as possible, but just in passing. (Too busy
pursuing degrees and bar-life, etc.) Then
I found myself at 35 dead sick of partying, and dead broke, and
kind of desperately dead bored... My generous mom (no "Mommie
Dearest" after all!) gave me a computer for Christmas in 2000;
the very first online search I did was for "Joan Crawford."
Before, my friends had been merely tolerant of my Crawford obsession, but
when I got online I discovered that there were other people just
like me
out there who really looooved
her! (It's always a happy day when you find you're no longer "merely
tolerated"!)

After
participating in various Joan message boards for a couple of years,
I realized that people were often posting very helpful and informative
info re Joan that was subsequently being forgotten as the later
messages scrolled on... And most of the Joan websites available primarily
seemed to focus either on the camp aspects of her later career or
on her "glory days" from MGM through Warners; or else
the webmaster would get bored and discontinue the site on a
whim.

Neither
the Camp nor the Glamour Girl (um, nor the "discontinued")
approach, I feel, is adequate for
a star and woman whose career spanned an incredible 50 years from
the Silents through the Television Age and whose various incarnations
defy easy categorization. On this site, I don't just want to show
pretty pictures from the '30s or make fun of her grand guignol era;
instead, I want to show where Joan Crawford came from as well as
every step of her journey, including what she had to say about what
was going on around her. The woman had a brain and guts and opinions
and talent as well as a face, and her longevity as an actress was
hardly reliant solely on lucky breaks or pure sex appeal; she worked
to get to the pinnacle of her field and subsequently worked to maintain
her career and status long beyond what anyone thought tenable.

I'm
extremely in awe of both her talent and her business acumen, as
well as of her beauty and style, and this site is intended to honor all of these
aspects of this astonishing woman and actress, as well as to be
a repository for otherwise-scattered information.

Joan
Crawford's contributions to film, and to the entertainment world
and pop culture
in general, have been immense, and her personal story inspiring.
I'm proud to be able to make this small contribution in recognition
of her talent and legacy.

Stephanie
Jones

March
23, 2004 (Austin, Texas)

About
"The
Best of Everything"

A
few weeks prior to my fast-approaching self-imposed online publication deadline
of March 23, 2004 (Joan's birthday), I e-mailed a friend to bemoan the fact that I wouldn't have
time to get every single bit of Joan information onto this site by that
date. She "helpfully" responded: "Don't feel bad if you don't have everything there.
You'll never be done with her."

"You'll never be done with her..."
A rather ominous and weirdly giddy thought (!), but it is finally
time nonetheless--on this most appropriate of dates-- to get this baby online. So,
patience, please, regarding the entries that aren't fully fleshed out yet. All of
the information (as much as I can find) will be forthcoming on an ongoing
basis. (And your help here would be greatly appreciated: If you have any Joan
info that you'd like to share with other fans, please e-mail me.)

Regarding
what is here now: I've
relied on dozens of books, magazines, and Internet sites--as well as e-mail
and message board correspondence with knowledgeable Joan fans--to compile this encyclopedia.

In addition, the now-defunct Joan Crawford
Online website was also initially an invaluable source of information. After
the webmaster took JCO down in December 2003, he sent me a disc with the complete
contents of his site, which proved helpful in the months leading up to the launch
of this
site in March of 2004.
(I have in
subsequent years added more than 30 times the material said
webmaster initially
provided.)

The following are the print texts that
have also provided helpful information for this site. (The initials after
the title are used in the Encyclopedia entries to indicate the source.)

Ruth
Harriet Louise and Hollywood Glamour Photography (R.
Dance/B. Robertson; 2002 University of California Press. This book
has been most useful in helping to date the photos on the site
from the 1920s and 1930s.)

Thanks for visiting
The
Best of Everything. Please e-mail me or
visit this
site's Facebook page if you have comments, questions, corrections,
or further Joan information to contribute.

Donations

The
Best of Everything
debuted in the Spring of 2004 at a mere 40 MB in size! In the nearly 10
years since then, it's expanded to something close to 1 GB!
Anything
you'd like to donate toThe
Best of Everythingto help cover site costs would be greatly appreciated. Contributions received will be used to cover
site maintenance and growth, and to keep the site
ad-free.

Thanks,
always, for your support.

Stephanie

Legal
Notice

Per
the Fair Use Clause of Section 107 of the amended Copyright Act of 1976 (17
USC Section 107), images and text
on this site are intended solely for non-profit educational purposes, to
provide researchers and general readers with information about Joan Crawford's
life and career. (A "joancrawfordbest.com" watermark on a photo
here does not imply ownership of the photo. I have placed the watermark on some
photos to prevent them from being copied and used elsewhere for commercial
purposes. To reiterate: This site is a noncommercial, nonprofit site, with
all information provided for educational purposes only.)

If
you use info from this site for research papers, please credit the site per
MLA style guidelines. Use of info for books, magazine articles, another website,
etc., should
also credit the site per standard practices and authorial etiquette.